Boating In The

Territory

by Bonzai Yak

112 pages

Chapter 7: Territory Expeditions (part a)

W'ai-Yun Ch'ai, he's a pretty neat guy. If you get a small taste of the
way that he is it'll help the hole that's inside of you grow. He's kind
of holey himself you see and if you open an empty place inside yourself
he'll be glad to sit in for a hand or two any time you need a hand. Me,
I've been keeping connected with him in an empty way for years and years.
W'ai-Yun Ch'ai, he's one of the members of the Empty Circle and they're
a big part of the Territory story, a very big part of it actually, so big
in fact that they're hard to see if you don't have some help. So that's
why I thought it would be a good plan for you to have a taste of his essence
before we continued on.

But before we do let's take a moment to quickly review some of the things
I've been telling you about the Territory. An overview of its basic shape
and qualities might go like this if we wanted it to. Initially there's me
and you and the other guys too, with boats in hand we cross the Border and
enter in to the Territory to see just what is and what's not. First we encounter
the islands and seas, the waves and the wind and the sailing ways that make
up the form of the Territory. We boat, we sail and come into port to report
and exchange the topology. After a bit we begin to see that the Territory
has a seemingly strange dimensionality that's not quite like what we thought
it might be. Paths and tunnels, space stretches out and back in on itself;
time has a way of conducting its day that doesn't quite fit on the dial
of your watch.

There's a whole different shape to the Territory than you've been led
to believe from the mapmakers' maps. It's all very fluid and hard to pin
down, the mapmakers try to control it for you, but the way that it happens
it doesn't quite work that way even if they convince you it does. The Territory
has an empty source that shifts into form as a matter of course and the
form disappears from time to time going back into emptiness. But after a
while that becomes the norm and as you boat you can find you can float with
whichever thing happens to be on the sea or waiting on the horizon.

The Territory is inhabited though, and the next thing you know there
are all these roles that involve themselves in the things that you do. The
emptiness of the Territory is an active thing that invites us all to enter
in and play in a much more conscious way. Ghosts interact, Pirates intrude
and you find the emptiness coming to you through the Territory is something
that you can take part in too. You can take on a role and disappear, fall
through a hole and begin to come near to the emptiness that informs the
form of everything. There are holes in the islands, holes in the sea, some
holes are kept open specifically by the Ghosts and the Hags. All these holes
everywhere where you look, and if you have courage or dumb bunny luck you
can climb down inside some without getting stuck. And then you can know
in a non-knowing way the emptiness that underlies and is one with the form
of the Territory.

When you are in the Territory you'll see its form and its emptiness;
not just one, not just the other, not even both of them both together or
neither of either one. Form is only emptiness, emptiness only form; form
is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form. The Territory
simply is, just this, just that, just just. Still even so you'll be bound
to see it in one form one way, in another another way. And after a while
you'll be able to see the emptiness too on the flip side of form; emptiness
this way, emptiness that. It's hard to describe because it has no form,
it's empty right? No words can cling to a thing that is no-thing, but still
it is there in the very same way that form seems to be, only different of
course because the Territory is neither one or the other or both or either.
And if you keep boating and floating free, the disturbance of seeing the
Territory in its form and emptiness drops away and you can be there with
it completely complete just as it is without any fuss.

But that takes a while and sometimes in between you'll need to see the
form of it all just the way the form is. That's where the boating and mapping
comes in as a way to see form quite specifically, without being told by
yourself or the others just how that form should be. Now the odd thing is
this: the emptiness can be specific too! That was a big surprise to me and
it may be to you when you see that it's true. Not specific the way form
is, emptiness is empty you know, it really is, but still, even so, its emptiness
is really empty in a specifically empty way.